Tales from the Quadead Zone

January. 01,1987      
Rating:
3.7
Trailer Synopsis Cast

A woman reads two spooky tales to the ghost of her dead son, Bobby: the first, about a poor family who takes drastic measures to allot more food to their members; the second, about a pair of adversarial brothers and what happens when one of them dies and the other attempts to humiliate his corpse.

Shirley L. Jones as  Bobby's Mother

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Reviews

Matrixiole
1987/01/01

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

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MusicChat
1987/01/02

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

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Megamind
1987/01/03

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

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Aubrey Hackett
1987/01/04

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

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Michael_Elliott
1987/01/05

Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987)* 1/2 (out of 4) A woman (Shirley Latanya Jones) is in her small house with the ghost of her dead son who wants to hear some stories. She sits him down in a chair and gets the book called Tales from the Quadead Zone and reads him two tales. The first story deals with a family of eight who only has enough food to feed four. The second story deals with a brother who steals the corpse of his much more successful and popular brother.Yes, those are the two stories, which might confuse you since the title says "quad" and you might be expected four films. No, you get two and then a wrap-around story dealing with the mother and her ghost child but you have to wonder why a fourth film wasn't added or the title changed. Either way, this here is from filmmaker Chester Novell Turner whose previous movie BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL is without question one of the zaniest and wickedly bad movies ever made. This one here is just as bad on many levels but at the same time there's no question that both films has a certain charm if you're a fan of bad movies.This thing here is certainly a mess because the first story dealing with the hungry family clocks in what seems like under ten minutes. The story is pretty much set up that the family is hungry and then it's over without any type of conclusion. A real head-scratcher of a sequence. The second story goes on and on and on with the brother constantly talking and laughing at the dead corpse. The first story should have been expanded and the second cut down for sure. Then there's the story with the mother and her dead son, which just drags out to get the running time to a total of 62 minutes! If you're unaware of Chester Novell Turner then you should know that his movies were recorded on a camcorder with unprofessional actors. The camera-work is pretty bad and even worse is that a lot of times the added on music score is so loud that you can't hear the dialogue being said. Apparently the budget of this was just $11,000 and it certainly shows. With that said, there's no question this is a "bad" movie but if you're into these types of films then it's actually fairly entertaining. It's certainly feels long even at just 62 minutes but bad cinema lovers should eat it up. The rest should just avoid.

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Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki
1987/01/06

Chester Novell Turner returns from (or to?) Black Devil Doll territory with this anthology, which barely even qualifies as an anthology, as the framework apparently counts as one story, and there are only two stories presented.Shirley Jones returns as well to play a woman haunted by her dead son's invisible ghost. She reads him a pair of stories from a book, the first involves a hillbilly killing his family, off-screen, in order to eat their sandwiches at dinnertime. Or, at least she starts to tell him the story. Turner seemingly either ran out of money, or interest in it, because crummy intertitles abruptly finish the tale for her, and the audience, after a short run time.The second is about a guy who tries to bury his dead brother under his house. For some strange reason, he feels compelled to shout profanities at the dead body before dressing him as a clown and digging the grave. For some even stranger reason, being dressed as a clown somehow reanimates his brother's corpse, the two men battle it out in the cellar, while dead clown brother recites from cue cards lines of dialogue, which is then heavilly distorted to make it unintelligible.That is the extent of the stories read by this woman. The third tale is, one supposes, the story of her husband coming home and whacking her over the head with the book from Hell, before getting himself shot and killed by her.Slightly less annoying than Novell's earlier Black Devil Doll From Hell, and not quite as technically inept (we don't hear high pitched buzzing noises on the soundtrack this time around) Truthfully, the dead clown brother segment wasn't bad, in a zero-budget, late night cable television sort of way, but I doubt I could endure this a second time.The closing credits read: "Tales from the Quadead Zone will return", implying that a sequel might emerge, which, thankfully, never happened.

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jimy23
1987/01/07

This is one of the weaker horror anthologies i have seen the light and sound are the worst and boy does it drag. A woman tells hers son who's a ghost some stories from a book called tales from the Quadead zone . The first story which is not even ten min's long is about a poor family who has to fight for there food one family member becomes becomes dangerously hungry the second story is about a angry brother who's more popular and favorite brother dies and he plans to bury him under the house in a clown suit there's one part where he goes on for 5 min's yelling at his brother saying he planned to kill him before he died. You feel bad for him his brother was a jerk always trying to one up him. Thats the last story from the book the movie ends with the woman's husband coming home and starting a fight which ends with him being stabbed.This is one of those shot on video movies that was filmed on a camcorder the sound is so bad when a ghost talks it non understandable the son sound like whispering when a scene is shot in a dark room it's pitch dark and for a movie thats only an hour long it drags there so much padding. The theme song is so off key it sound like some jive witch is singing it.

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Takeshi666
1987/01/08

Ah, the good old days of VHS, when just about any cinematic turd could find a distributor - why else do you think so many of the movies shown on MST3K were released on VHS *before* that show was even aired? Tho I guess they had some standards; a direct to video release like Tales From the Quadead Zone probably would have never even qualified. And certainly not for a cinematic release, as the whole thing was shot on video. And it shows.The second movie of Chester Novell Turner, who only made two films before forever disappearing into relative obscurity, shows that Chester Novell Turner is to writing what Chester Novell Turner is to directing. After a whole three minutes of lousy drawings and even lousier Casio keyboard music that makes up the movie's opening, we're introduced to the same ugly lady with the hideous hairdo that starred in the previous movie, The Black Devil Doll From Hell, who speaks to her crappy video effect of a dead son and reads him stories.Obviously this movie is supposed to be a horror anthology like Tales from the Crypt, what with the premise and all, but for one thing, this film never even begins to work as a horror film; despite the title of the movie, there's only THREE stories in the entire film - and the third isn't even from the stupid book she reads! I don't think I need to even get into the storyline to tell you how awful this film is. Let's just say that both stories are neither interesting or terrifying, the audio mix is so bad that the awful and unfitting Casio music drowns out the already inaudible dialog.This film really is best viewed with a group of friends while MST3K'ing the hell out of it.

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